Preparing to Live on Mars

With all the talk about rocketing to Mars, we need to ensure we conduct studies as well regarding how we will live on Mars.  And this is where the Mars Society's MarsDesert Research Station comes into the picture.  The stations are "laboratories for learning how to live and work on another planet."  Various prototypes house four to six crew members and give scientists a chance to see how humans will fare in an harsh, isolated environment.  Crew members include geologists, astrobiologists, engineers, mechanics, physicians and others, who may live in the habitat for weeks or even months. 

Here is how Crew 140, which served a mission from April to August this year, wrote about some of the lessons learned in the final missionreport: 

The greenhouse on Mars will be the main power source of life of the first inhabitants on the Martian surface. Due to the strong ultra violet rays on the Red Planet, Luciana Tenorio (Crew Journalist & EVA Engineer), considered a fabric/filter 100% UV, besides the material of the fabric is a nonwoven polyester which covers the aluminum frames (icosahedrons). This small shelter from the harmful UV rays was born from the need for shade during the days of solar intensity on Mars, in the Utah desert, where the greenhouse plants die burned by the strong intensity through the skin of polycarbonate (actual covering of the greenhouse). The project of Luciana was testing this second skin over the fourth rib of the greenhouse structure to see how the plant growing developments takes place during our two weeks of the research. During the first week the temperature inside the greenhouse lowered a little bit, but in the second week the temperature grew much more outside. As the project spanned only a very small portion of the greenhouse, we feel that it would have been very successful in achieving its goals if it had been placed over the entire surface of the Greenhab.

I am glad eager volunteers are adding to our knowledge about how to live on Mars.  You can volunteer to join a mission or simply donate to these missions. 

Last Chance to Participate in the MARS Project

Today is the last day to volunteer as a crew member for The Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station, a project that has been underway for more than a decade:

In order to help develop key knowledge needed to prepare for human Mars exploration, and to inspire the public by making sensuous the vision of human exploration of Mars, the Mars Society has initiated the Mars Analog Research Station (MARS) project. A global program of Mars exploration operations research, the MARS project will include four Mars base-like habitats located in deserts in the Canadian Arctic, the American southwest, the Australian outback, and Iceland. In these Mars-like environments, we will launch a program of extensive long-duration geology and biology field exploration operations conducted in the same style and under many of the same constraints as they would on the Red Planet. By doing so, we will start the process of learning how to explore on Mars.

Each Station's centerpiece is a cylindrical habitat, "The Hab," an 8-meter diameter, two-deck structure mounted on landing struts. Peripheral external structures, some inflatable, may be appended to the Hab as well.

Each station will serve as a field base to teams of four to six crew members: geologists, astrobiologists, engineers, mechanics, physicians and others, who live for weeks to months at a time in relative isolation in a Mars analog environment. Mars analogs can be defined as locations on Earth where some environmental conditions, geologic features, biological attributes or combinations thereof may approximate in some specific way those thought to be encountered on Mars, either at present or earlier in that planet's history. Studying such sites leads to new insights into the nature and evolution of Mars, the Earth, and life.

It sounds like a great experiment that allows for greater participation in the planning of a future Mars journey.  Go here for the application if you want to be a member of the MARS crew.  Other volunteer opportunities are also available here. 

Note:  Each research team has its own mission patch.